The concept of folding over a side edge of an adhesive coated tape that will later be applied for example to seal or close a carton or the like and provide a not stuck edge that may be gripped to facilitate opening of the carton is well known. Many hand or manually operated tape applicators have been designed and patented that fold over onto itself at least one side edge of a tape coated on one side with adhesive before it is to be applied. Examples of such devices are U.S. Pat. No. 7,334,620 issued Feb. 26, 2008 to Imazeki; U.S. Pat. No. 7357,285 issued Apr. 15, 2008 Namekawa et al.; and UP patent Applications 2001/0000096 published Apr. 5, 2001 inventor Tolerico et al.; and 2006/0175017 published Aug. 10, 2006 to Namekawa et al. Japanese PCT publication WO2006/032175 illustrates another such device. None of these devices are adapted for commercial machines that automatically apply withdraw such tape from a supply roll at a relatively high speed and apply same to a case as it is moved thereby.
It is not uncommon to provide a nip roll that is biased into engagement with the periphery of the supply roll of tape and functions to improve the smoothness with which tape is withdrawn from the roll in the taping operation.
Tape rolls do not always retain their shape and are sometimes deformed or warped; thus a system for steering or aligning the tape as it is removed from the roll into a tape path would improve the functioning of the machine by better insuring the tape is properly fed from the roll. This is particularly important when folding occurs along the feed path in a commercial machine as taught by the present invention.